Eckleburg

Sunday night is blue. Tinted like jazz in a somber bar. The trailing smoke from cigarettes needing to be ashed hang like witch’s fingers in the stale air. It is dark like the early morning sky and lonely like the cars passing on the wet streets outside. Few and far between. Sunday feels like looking into a deep ocean, but only being able to float the surface. I shrug on my navy jacket and leave the dreary place.

My dreams are white. Not like soft clouds that support the sky. They move like ghosts and sound like static. They are sheer curtains that blow in one end of the room and out the other like pale flags. My dreams are the beautiful yet colorless shirts that fall from Daisy’s grasp. The bed’s linen holds me down like a blanket of snow, cold and heavy.

The morning is yellow. Soft like the weathered streetlamps, still going bright as the sky lightens. Gentle cello sputterings drift through the window, making dust dance on sunbeams. It is eloquent and golden. The bouquet sitting center on the table drops a petal covered in pollen. I leave it there and listen to the unseen strangers, feeling both within and without.

Gray are the busy people in the street. Their suits and faces wrinkled with wear. They match the concrete they tread, the monstrous buildings in which they work. Their dreary cubicles and screeching machines demand every bit of their attention. On their keyboards, the letters have lifted off away and attached themselves to those they hold captive. All with the same leaden gaze and set ways.

The sun sets and the sky is pink. The expanse blushes like sweet whispers. People start to see things through rose-colored lenses as they mourn the lost day. They are now all dreamers, parading in Gatsby’s Oxford suit. But their flowery words are raw and without real meaning. I go back to the bar, filled with laughing people with their flush faces. Because Monday is rosy, and the night will soon be blue.